Two ice swimming champions from Harrogate have talked about what drives them to succeed after plunging into one degree waters in Romania for the first ever European Ice Swimming Championship.
More than 300 athletes from 27 countries competed, including Harrogate athletes Millie Bell, 24 and Jonty Warneken, 51.
Ice swimming involves swimming in water in temperatures below five degrees and the season takes place December to March. There are hopes the fast-growing sport could be included in the Winter Olympics.
Jonty lost his leg in a car accident in 1994 aged 22 and ice swims alongside his job as head of office at Atomos financial services. He has been ice swimming for more than 10 years and is a board member and vice president of the International Ice Swimming Association. He achieved a Guinness world record in 2014 for being the the first disabled person to complete an ice mile swim.
In this month’s event in Romania, he won two silver medals and a bronze, but his focus was more on the organisation of the event.
Talking about the impact of his disability, he said:
“I just have to think about things more, how to exit and enter the water. I know getting in it is going to hurt me and the titanium pin in my ankle is torture in the cold but I’m used to it. I carry on for the love of it. Everything is surmountable.
“Ice swimming can help with ailments and mental health but what matters most is getting people in and out of the water.”
He added:
“The sport is expanding. Yorkshire is the world centre, there is real expertise here and people fly over to train here.”
He says people often get involved for the swimming but stay because of the community.
Millie Bell and Jonty Warneken
British ice swimming champion Millie Bell, agrees. She says:
“I enjoy the community, its really close knit. It means you’re always with friends having a laugh even though the racing is quite serious and competitive.”
Millie competed in four events at the European Championships and achieved personal bests in all of the races. She won one silver, two bronze and finished fourth place in the 25-29 age bracket.
Now in her third season of ice swimming, she trains six times a week — four in an indoor pool and twice outdoors at Pool Bridge, York.
Millie trained with an indoor Harrogate district swimming club until she was 12 but “gave up because (she) wasn’t very good”. She began swimming again as part of a triathlon group while at university in York and quickly realised her favourite element was swimming.
“I reached the end of the summer swim season and just thought ‘why stop?’. So I just carried on through winter. Then I realised there were races so then I started properly.
“I just enjoy any kind of swimming. But I especially love being outside. It’s a sense of freedom, just you and the water with no lanes or end of the pool, you can just keep going.”
Her next project is a challenge she has set herself — swimming the English Channel in August this year. This will be a charity swim to raise money for Saint Michael’s Hospice and the charity Cosmic, which cares for babies and children in intensive care.
She said people often think ice swimmers are crazy:
“Even my family think I’m bonkers. People think we are superhuman, I don’t think people realise we are a normal people just pushing our bodies. It is just mind over matter.”
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